UNC School of Civic Life would receive millions in state funding under House budget

The proposed School of Civic Life and Leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill would be established and receive $2 million in state funding in each of the next two fiscal years under the state House’s budget proposal released Wednesday.

The funding would provide “academic start-up funds” to create and operate the school and would “support development of the school, the initial hiring of faculty and staff, and an expansion of the curricular work of the existing Program for Public Discourse,” the committee report on the budget states.

The School of Civic Life has been a contentious issue at UNC since the university’s Board of Trustees first proposed the school through a resolution at its January board meeting. That resolution did not establish the school, but requested university administration “accelerate its development.”

The board’s actions in passing the resolution have come under fire from UNC faculty, over both the process through which the school has been proposed and perceived political intentions.

The House is expected to hold its votes on the budget next week. After the House passes its budget, the Senate’s budget bill is expected to be out in mid-May. A final compromise budget between the chambers could pass in June.

House proposal is short of planning document request

Under the House budget proposal, which is a two-year proposal, the School of Civic Life would be allocated $2 million in one-time funds in both the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 fiscal years.

That amount is short of the full $5 million in recurring funds requested for the 2023-2024 fiscal year in a budget planning document, reported by The News & Observer in February, that was developed by UNC provost Christopher Clemens.

The budget bill states that if the funding provided through the budget is insufficient to establish the school, the university “shall expend sufficient additional funds to achieve that purpose.”

Clemens’ budget planning document stated that the university expects any state-appropriated funds to the school will be “matched with private support.” Specific donors or sources of that financial support were not listed in the planning document.

In February, a UNC spokesperson told The N&O by email that “any discussion on funding sources would happen after a thoughtful, collaborative process with our Carolina faculty, students and community.”

The budget bill also directs the Board of Trustees to report by March 15, 2024, to the legislature on progress made toward establishing the school and any “factors affecting the long-term sustainability” of it.

School has been subject of controversy

As described by the trustees and in Clemens’ draft budget memo, the School of Civic Life would be intended to create degree programs in civic studies and develop students’ skills in public discourse.

The budget bill further describes the school’s purpose, saying courses offered by the school would “focus on the development of democratic competencies informed by American history and the American political tradition, with the purpose of fostering public discourse and civil engagement necessary to promote democracy and benefit society.”

The school has been described as a way to bolster and make more robust the university’s Program for Public Discourse. That program, which officially launched in 2019, was met in its planning stages with controversy over alleged conservative leanings, influences and funding sources.

After the Board of Trustees’ January meeting, board chair David Boliek appeared on the “Fox and Friends” morning show, saying in an interview that the school is intended to balance political views on campus.

“At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we clearly have a world class faculty that exists and teaches students and creates leaders of the future. We, however, have no shortage of left-of-center, progressive views on our campus, like many campuses across the nation,” Boliek said.

“But the same really can’t be said about right-of center views. So this is an effort to try to remedy that with the School of Civic Life and Leadership, which will provide equal opportunity for both views to be taught at the university.”

Faculty said they were not informed of the proposal ahead of time or consulted on the school.

In an interview with The N&O in February, faculty chair Mimi Chapman said the process of developing the school up to this point has been “completely backward to how something like this might proceed” under typical shared governance structures at the university, in which new academic programs traditionally come from faculty — not the trustees.

The school would be the second to be established at UNC in recent years.

The School of Data Science and Society launched at the university last fall, more than two years after the Board of Trustees endorsed a formal feasibility plan to establish it. The proposal for that school was developed over roughly a year, from May 2019 to February 2020, with input from more than 100 faculty, staff and students, and stemmed from previous data science initiatives at the university dating back to 2012.

Reporter Dawn Baumgartner Vaughan contributed to this story.